I've been using duolingo for a little over a week now, thanks to Gulliver who posted the link! I'm trying to learn spanish since I'm planning to visit my sister, who lives in Costa Rica, in a near future. Feels like I've learned a lot, just by using it a little bit everyday. It's really fun!

I also speak English fairly well. My accent is frenchy, though. Or rather quebecish? (Let's just call it sexy.) That's because I read lots of books, but I hardly ever hear English spoken. So I'd say I have a nearly excellent knowledge of literary English, while not knowing the pronunciation of many basic words...

Nihongo ga daisuki desu! 2005 nen kara benkyôshiteimasu. Totemo tanoshii desu. (I know, I should reinstall that Japanese-writing function on my computer). The funniest homophones/homograms I know have to do with Japanese. "Letter" in Japanese is written exactly the same way as "toilet paper" in Chinese. And "tchin-tchin" is something you say loudly when making a toast in French, but in Japanese, it means male genital parts...

So I'm sorta kinda learning-ish a new language! I'm taking a class where we learn to document a language we don't know (and they generally pick underdocumented languages). This semester it's Songhai from eastern Mali. It's probably the coolest class ever, even though it's definitely going to be challenging.

Thanks! I generally know where to put accents, but I'm so used to just having spellcheck do it for me that I frequently forget to add them when I type. Also, it seems my grammar wasn't as bad as I expected it to be. Mostly the fear of making mistakes keeps me from practicing more, (and therefore I continue to make mistakes).

Linguistics is really amazing, I'm so glad I decided to give it a shot.

Awesome experience: Last night I was at satsang, listening to my friend Padma tell a story in Dutch and then re-tell it to her mom in Marathi. Not only did I understand the Dutch story word-for-word (forking awesome, considering the English bubble that I live in and that I haven't done a Dutch class), I understood the Marathi .... even better than the Dutch, and I haven't heard or thought about Marathi in at least 4 years. Kick asparagus. Thank you, languagey brain.

I have a question for you French speakers out there. I am writing a film review for my French class and I am having a hard time figuring out how to say, "she was murdered." If I write, "elle a tué" or "elle a assassininé" doesn't that imply that she was the one doing the killing? Is there a really obvious answer that I am not seeing? Please help!

By the way, the distinction between homicide, meurtre and assassinat are different in French. Meurtre implies that the killing was deliberate, assassinat that it was premeditated. No implications about political motivations or anything.

I have a question for you French speakers out there. I am writing a film review for my French class and I am having a hard time figuring out how to say, "she was murdered." If I write, "elle a tué" or "elle a assassininé" doesn't that imply that she was the one doing the killing? Is there a really obvious answer that I am not seeing? Please help!

Elle a tué and elle a assassiné both mean "she killed" or "she murdered" or somesuch.

I just thought I'd clarify what aelle and mumbles have said.

To write "she was killed", or "she was murdered", you use a form of être and then the past participle, much like we do in English.

Using "kill" tuer as an example:The past participle of tuer is tué (which you correctly identified). This roughly means "killed" in English.

You then use the past tense of "to be" être: elle a été and then add tué on the end. So, now you have elle a été tué. Which is almost right, but verbs that come after être like this kind of act like adjectives, so it needs the feminine e ending.

So, that gives us elle a été tuée.

This is called the passive! Grammar is fun.

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Thank you for the explanation Gulliver! I am still in first year French, so we haven't really gotten that far yet. My teacher discourages us from using things we haven't learned in class when we are writing our compositions, but I find that to be really limiting so I usually do it anyway. Besides, how are you supposed to explain the plot of the film Ne le dis à personne if you can't say was murdered?

Thank you for the explanation Gulliver! I am still in first year French, so we haven't really gotten that far yet. My teacher discourages us from using things we haven't learned in class when we are writing our compositions, but I find that to be really limiting so I usually do it anyway. Besides, how are you supposed to explain the plot of the film Ne le dis à personne if you can't say was murdered?